TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
When manuals specifically for a given product are sent out, it is kind of a
reverence to the customer; to make the customer feel more important ... in
the sense of "we care for YOU; you are not just one among many".
So, towards the customer having a customized manual is better.
Now, how can you handle that on creation side. There are tools which have a
feature named "conditional text". This would allow you to maintain a
"family" document, and give product-specific features a special tag
(imagine a color). When you print, you would select the base plus the
specific color ... and only this appears on print-out. The tool coming to
my mind is Framemaker. It would also allow to use a variable for the
product name, for example.
When you have a global change, you will have to change the base manual only
... and still be able to produce customized manuals.
If you have a print-on-demand solution in your company, you could even set
up a database-controlled manual production system, where you would put
together all components for that specific order.
Hope, this can help.
Max Wyss
PRODOK Engineering AG
Technical documentation and translations, Electronic Publishing
CH-8906 Bonstetten, Switzerland
Fax: +41 1 700 20 37
e-mail: mailto:prodok -at- prodok -dot- ch or 100012 -dot- 44 -at- compuserve -dot- com
Bridging the Knowledge Gap ...
... with Acrobat Forms ... now for belt drive designers at
>Iíd like your comments about this situation.
>
>My company has a product line of over 60 interface boards. Each board is
>shipped with a hardware and a software manual. Each board requires its own
>hardware manual, which explains the details of each boardís unique
>specifications. But the software drivers supplied with each board are often
>used with more than one board. Sometimes one set of drivers works with ten
>different boards.
>
>So Iíve started grouping the software drivers manuals into "The XX Family"
>manuals. On the first page of the "The XX Family" manual, I list the boards
>with which the user can use that particular software. Then, throughout the
>manual, I place notes by any driver functions that apply only to certain
>boards.
>
>The main reasons I do this are:
>1. Better manual/revision maintenance. When a change needs to be made to
>one set of drivers, I make the change in one place, rather than having to
>go dig up every manual which includes that driver function, and then revise
>all those other manuals as well.
>2. Less manuals. With such an extensive product line, I think the less
>manuals the better. There are simply a lot of manuals to manage.
>
>Well, thereís another opinion in the company. This opinion says every
>user/customer should get a manual named for *his* card. In most cases, the
>"XX Family" name includes a part of every boardís product name, but in at
>least one case it doesnít. This opinion also says that too many notes
>throughout a manual is confusing for the user ("This function is only for
>users of boards A, B and C. If you have boards D and E, ignore this
>function.")
>
>Anybody want to offer their 2 cents?
>
>Thanks,
>Debbie Figus
>Excalibur Systems
>Jerusalem, Israel
